Barbara Braunohler

Barbara Braunohler (born 1928) is a German Canadian artist born in Görlitz, Lower Silesia. Her father was a journalist, descended from a family of theatre performers, three generations of which performed at a court theatre in the province of Silesia.

Her mother was a business woman, but musically inclined. She belonged to a chamber orchestra and ran a musical instrument wholesale business in Berlin.

In the aftermath of the First World War Braunohler's parents decided to move to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in hopes of finding easier living conditions. They returned to Berlin seven years later, in 1936. At that time her father became a script writer in the film industry.

Halfway through the Second World War, Braunohler was sent to Görlitz to live with friends of the family in order to escape the air raids in Berlin and to receive uninterrupted schooling. When Görlitz became endangered by advancing Red Army troops in 1945, she left and undertook a perilous trip westward to reach her mother, who had already joined her older sister in a small town in central Germany. It was there that she experienced the end of the war and every crisis that followed.

Due to extreme shortages of food, goods and jobs, as well as frozen bank accounts, Braunohler had to resort to drawing portraits to make an income, although she did not have any previous training. With no photographer in town, people were eager to have their family members documented through drawings.

After the German currency change in 1948 and the appearance of a photo studio in town, art sales dropped dramatically. From then on, Braunohler worked in that photo studio as a retoucher, working for the family of her future husband. She came with them to Toronto, Canada in 1953.

A few years later, Braunohler took up art classes in Toronto and eventually resumed portrait painting. In time she became one of Canada’s most prolific portraitists with commissions to paint university presidents and chancellors, deans, bishops, dignitaries, and other well-known personalities. In addition, Braunohler gave portrait workshops for many years.

External links

*http://www.millenniumartssociety.org/braunohler.htm
*http://www.braunohler.com